CHAPTER EIGHT
TIERNAN
A loud bang on the door woke me up.
“Wakey wakey, Sir Kills-a-Lot,” Enzo’s voice sing-songed from the other side. Of course, the cheerful bastard was a morning person. “Time to
fulfill your end of the bargain.”
My end of the barg—?
Bollocks. I forgot the stupid blood-on-the-sheets tradition. Vello needed it to prove his knocked-up daughter was a virgin. I wasn’t normally in the habit of following directions, but in this case, we needed to keep a united front. It’d be bad for business if people knew I married a knocked-up woman.
I grabbed my phone, sifting through my last messages.
Luca: Don’t you dare touch her.
Achilles: Not even a peck on the cheek, asshole.
Tiernan: Stop blowing up my phone.
Enzo: Touch a hair on her head, and your phone won’t be the only thing exploding.
Seeing as my wife stabbed and shot me last night, I had at least two semi-open wounds to tarnish the expensive sheets with. Funny, the don didn’t mention she was violent. Probably because he knew it’d turn me on.
“Ten minutes.” I stretched across the bed. I could practically feel Enzo hovering on the other side of the door like a floating piece of shit in a public
restroom.
“Is Lila okay?”
I threw a glance at the locked door of the en suite, from which annoying whimpers had drifted until four in the morning. “Grand.”
Silence seeped through the door crack.
“Did you…” He paused, clearing his throat. “Honor our deal?”
Barely, I thought sardonically. That second time she tried to stab me, I leaked enough precum to glaze a Cinnabon.
“I did.” I slung an arm over the mountain of silken pillows behind me.
“Despite her constant begging. She was really asking for it.”
I was supposed to get my dick wet after the ceremony to ensure I was sated by the time I got to the suite. The Ferrante brothers had offered to pay me 50K for every month I didn’t touch their sister. All in cash.
Unfortunately, the cheerleader spoke too much and sucked too little, so I cut her loose before I even unzipped. Not that it mattered. Even a good fuck wouldn’t be enough to calm down the fire Lila ignited in me whenever she tried to kill me.
Which was pretty bleeding often considering we hadn’t known each other for more than eight hours.
Smashing a vase inside her dress was a nice touch. I wasn’t sure about her cognitive abilities, but I deduced she knew exactly what happened to her and wasn’t keen on a repeat.
Rubbing the sleepiness from my eyes, I stood up and banged on the bathroom door.
“Up.” I cupped my morning wood, dying for a piss. “We need to hit the road.”
The Ferrantes’ private jet was due to leave at noon, and I still had to present the sheets, have breakfast with a bunch of Italian dimwits, and meet with the Camorra to strategize the attack on the Bratva.
The door slid open, and Lila reappeared. Even with smudged makeup and a wrinkled dress, she was still fucking gorgeous. Her looks were a problem. I made a mental note to chop that pretty hair and maybe add a scar or two to her face.
“Breakfast’s in ten. Get dressed.” I shouldered past her, tugging my sweatpants down and taking a piss.
She went about her business quietly, and other than a few death glares, didn’t show great enthusiasm to kill me this morning.
Once I was done brushing my teeth, she slipped into the bathroom and returned with her hair in a loose French braid, a fresh clean face and a pink ruffled dress. She needed to stop dressing like a toddler. Shy of her wedding
dress, everything I’d seen her in looked like it was plucked straight off a Baby Gap hanger.
Avoiding my gaze, she padded toward the door quickly.
“Stop,” I ordered.
She did.
“Sit.” I pointed at the unchristened bed.
She followed my instructions, defiant anger rolling off her stiff shoulders.
I had all the good intentions and warmth of a reptile, but I still recognized she needed to know what the fuck she was doing with a knife if she planned to wave one around frequently.
I dug a Swiss knife from my pocket. Her eyes flared as I crouched in front of her.
“Quick lesson in anatomy and stabbing people, since it’s less work than teaching you how to use a gun.” I flicked the blade open on a sigh. “When you attack someone, you want to be lethal and strategic. Don’t just wave it around like you’re trying to swat a fly.” I had no idea how much of this shit actually registered. Since I wasn’t in the habit of repeating myself, she better fucking pay attention. “You go for the main blood carriers. The faster they bleed out, the slower they are to chase you. Radial and ulnar arteries.”
I pointed at my wrists with the knife, making a horizontal slit motion less than an inch away. She blinked. “Jugular veins.” I pointed at my own neck.
“Cubital fossa.” I poked the blade inside my elbows. “The chest seems like an appealing option, but due to the thick layers of muscle and bone, it’s hard to penetrate without proper force.”
She stared at me silently, taking it all in. She was either the stupidest creature I’d ever met or the smartest. It was also possible she was a spy. A way for the Ferrantes to harvest intel. I filed that in the back of my head.
“Now, if you want to inflict superficial wounds, go for the shoulders.
Forearms. Palms.” I handed her the knife. She took it, uncertainty swimming in those Nordic eyes.
I extended my palm in her direction. “We need to sully those sheets in the next minute. Go vertical to avoid hitting the nerves. This way.” I dragged my finger along my palm.
This was a twofold exercise. One, I wanted to check her cognitive abilities by giving her a complex instruction. Two, I wanted to flush the hunger for my blood out of her system. My guess was she bottled up a
healthy dose of feminine rage these past eighteen years. She had a scratch
to itch.
She didn’t make a move.
“You’ve been wanting to do this since we got here.” I held her gaze.
“This is your one and only chance. Next time, I’ll retaliate.”
Her nostrils flared, a flash of the Ferrante wrath flickering in her pupils.
She leaned in, aiming the blade at my throat. She smelled decadent. A heady combination I’d yet to detect on human skin. Like flowers and summer and innocence and mine.
It was time to start looking for a fair-haired, dainty mistress I could pretend was her from behind.
“There you are,” I drawled, my gaze never wavering from hers as she pushed the blade against the throbbing vein in my neck. “Now be a good girl and finish the job.”
She grabbed my wrist, opened my palm, and slashed the inside of it. It was a straight, vertical line from my thumb to wrist with the precision of a pathologist.
Intellectually challenged, my ass. She understands complicated assignments.
This was an unfortunate turn of events for my new wife. Because if I found out she was a mole—which I now suspected—I was going to punish her. Severely.
I raised my palm between us. Blood snaked down my forearm, twisting like ivy. We both watched. Her in fascination, me with dry amusement.
“First time drawing blood?”
She licked her lips quietly.
“Here. Have a taste.” I pushed my bloodied hand in her face. “One of the many perks of marrying a psychopathic murderer is I’m in no position to judge you.”
I was fucking with her. Testing her limits. Stretching and pushing them to make them burst so I could unveil what lurked beyond that porcelain doll facade.
Her eyes hooded, and her breathing labored. She snatched my wrist with those dainty fingers of hers and jerked it to her cherry-blossom lips.
She forked my fingers with her hot, wet tongue, tasting my blood, ravaging it like a hungry, feral thing. She growled, high on her own newfound ferocity, and I saw it then. Who she was.
A monster, like the rest of her family.
A pretty monster, but one who was capable of killing just like any other.
It was a thing of beauty, watching her feast on my blood. Submitting to her brutal nature. The way her eyelids fluttered shut, the shallow panting that made her tits bounce in this odd, erratic rhythm. Her sweet tongue moved in and out between my fingers, catching every drop.
I hoped she was a spy, because then, I’d have a very good excuse to punish her. And punishing a Ferrante was something I’d always had an appetite for.
Sucking in a breath, I stood up and fisted the unspoiled snowy sheets, tainting them pink.
A knock on the door reminded me there was a world outside of this suite, and that it was time for me to conquer it. I glanced at my wife, who had a postorgasmic, dopey look in her eyes and swollen lips. She didn’t seem so innocent and compliant under the morning light.
I turned my back on her.
“Limp your way to breakfast.” _______
I disposed of Lila at the women’s breakfast table on the patio along with Fintan, Tierney, and two of my soldiers before meeting with the Ferrante men. I didn’t trust the Camorra with her safety. They fucked up once, and though she couldn’t get pregnant again, I didn’t like people touching my shit. My siblings were trustworthy. Chaotic and extremely messed up, but reliable.
“Where’d the blood on the sheets come from?” Luca’s businesslike tone gave nothing away as he and his brothers escorted me to Vello’s office.
I uncurled my fist and showed him his sister’s handiwork.
Luca nodded. “I’ll send someone with the cash tomorrow.”
“Next month I’m bumping it up from fifty K to eighty.”
“The fuck?” Enzo protested. “Why?”
“I got a preview when she changed this morning. You’re lowballing me.
That pussy’s worth a lot.”
All three brothers trained their faces to a hard mask, but their flared nostrils gave their rage away. I never understood Italian conservatism.
Tierney could get railed by every man on this island for all I cared as long as she consented to it.
“Don’t parade your whores in front of my sister ever again,” Achilles finally clipped out. “It’s disrespectful to the family.”
I followed them down a curved hallway with black and white checked marble and headless Roman sculptures. “Consider yourself lucky I haven’t raped her.”
I doubted I ever would, but I did like keeping people on their toes.
Money could keep me sated for only so long. I was promised a docile little maiden and ended up with a venomous demoness. All bets were off now.
We arrived at the tall double doors leading to Vello’s Crimson Key lair.
“If I find out you touched her, I am going to snap your windpipe like a wishbone,” Luca said in a conversational tone.
“Your sister tried to kill me three times before breakfast,” I notified the worried brothers.
Achilles and Luca exchanged perplexed looks, both raising their brows.
“She doesn’t like it when you change her routine,” Enzo explained.
“Think about it, man. She can’t control shit. Predictability is the only power she has.”
“And surely, you weren’t shocked by this turn of events.” Luca’s canine smirk made me want to bash those white teeth down his throat. “You bring out the violent murderer in people, Tiernan. Like Enzo plays with knives, and Achilles performs autopsies on his victims for shits and giggles. That’s your thing.”
“What’s your thing?” I marveled. “Moping around like a teenage girl who’s just been dumped?”
“Cleaning up after everyone’s mess.” He paused, giving it some thought. “Always doing the right thing.”
“Morality is mediocrity’s dry-cunted sister.”
I burst through the French doors of Vello’s office, tossing the sullied sheets on his desk. He was in the midst of what looked like a dialysis treatment, two uniformed nurses fussing over him behind his desk.
He examined the bloodstained sheets with furrowed white brows. “Did everyone else see it?”
I nodded, helping myself to a drink at his liquor cart, making myself right at home.
“Drinking at eight thirty in the morning has a name,” Enzo pointed out behind my back.
“Yes. It’s called fun.” I poured three fingers of whiskey from the decanter, slinging the amber liquid down my throat.
“I don’t remember offering you a drink, son,” Vello said.
“I don’t remember asking.”
“Good. Now that unpleasantries were exchanged, let’s talk shop.” Luca lit the cigarette dangling from his mouth. The three brothers took their seats around Vello’s desk, which left no room for me. Just as well, as I didn’t plan
to stay long.
“What’s your strategy?” Vello asked me.
“We wait for the perfect timing.” I swung my gaze between them, pouring myself another drink. “Then, we ambush them when they least expect it.”
“Ambush them? In their own territory?” Enzo’s eyes narrowed. “That’s a war declaration.”
“Wars have the tendency to end you if you don’t end them first,” I said curtly. “If we wait around twiddling our thumbs for the Russians to strike, we’ll lose. Better to throw our big dicks on the table and get it over with.”
“You can’t just barge in and go on a rampage,” Vello coughed out. A dying horse on his way to the glue factory. No wonder the Ferrantes hid him from plain sight.
“What a preposterous thing to say. Of course I can,” I countered.
“You’ve been playing too much chess, Vello. Once you start moving knights and bishops, sacrificing pawns, you alert your enemy he is on a battlefield. Better to let him find out when there’s a sword wedged between his ribs.”
“Fine. Let’s say we ambush them,” Achilles said. “Then what?”
“We leave a void in the West Coast.” Luca took a drag of his cigarette, smoke skulking out of his nostrils. “Vegas, LA, San Francisco, Bakersfield, and the border.”
“We’ll divide them between us and take over.” I prowled over to them, plucking a U.S. map from my back pocket and splaying it on Vello’s table.
“Appoint our own people, open our own charters. The Russians run a basic operation. Weapons. Human trafficking. Cartel. Igor never struck alliances with American governmental bodies. Mayors, senators, feds. Waltzing in and taking over will be a piece of cake.”
“And if his soldiers come for us in retaliation?” Enzo arched his brow.
I shrugged. “We kill their families and make them watch. Once we go through the first and second ranks, the rest will slink away.”
Vello rubbed his chin, tugging at the dialysis cords hooked to his arm.
“And when do you suggest we strike?”
“A few months, when the dust settles.” Now that Igor was dead, the Bratva was in disarray. “His son Alex is a capable man, but he’s in Russia now, tangled up in cleaning up the mess his father left behind.”
“When’s he coming back?” Luca asked.
“Not soon, is my guess. Igor spent the last four decades cozying up to politically connected oligarchs who are now being persecuted by the new Russian government. He needs to rebuild connections there. Start from scratch.”
And find a wife. Now that Igor was dead, his sons needed heirs, fast.
Like the Camorra, the Bratva liked to keep things in the family.
“What about the other brothers?” Achilles said.
“Jeremie and Slava are in the United States,” I said. “So is the baby sister, Katya. I hear she wants to go to college on the East Coast, so Alex might contact you to ask for permission to send her to Camorra territory.”
“You moonlighting as a college adviser?” Enzo snorted. “How the fuck do you know where she wants to go to school?”
Because I make it a point to know every time a Rasputin shits, eats, or breathes.
“Sam Brennan’s been keeping tabs for me. The siblings are holding down the fort in Vegas.” I shrugged. “Push comes to shove, I can always fly to Moskva and finish Alex off myself. Throw the system into chaos, then take down the rest of the Rasputins here.”
“Moskva?” Vello’s mouth tugged at one corner.
“Moscow,” I corrected. Fuck.
“That’s not what you said,” Luca pointed out.
“That’s what I fucking meant.”
But it was too late. A chink had chipped in my armor. They detected it.
The disease festering underneath my ragged exterior. My secret.
“So, we wait for your word to strike?” Achilles finally spoke.
“Yes.”
“Timeframe?”
“Six to seven months.”
They looked between them. My jaw flexed. “They won’t make the first move. They’re recuperating from the pakhan’s death and waiting for Alex.”
“It’s not that.” Luca shook his head.
“Am I missing something? Do you have some big plans for that period?”
“No, stronzo, you do,” Enzo spluttered. “You’re welcoming a baby.”
I was welcoming bleeding nothing. I wasn’t going to stick around for their sister nor for the bastard in her womb. I had other plans. Ones that didn’t include a family.
“I can multitask.” I plucked a pen from Vello’s desk and circled my desired Bratva territories. “Be on standby. I’ll send word when I have an update.”
Making my way to the double doors, I stopped at the sound of Vello hissing my name. His voice was as frail as his diminishing body.
I glanced over my shoulder. “Yes?”
“Have you started looking for Lila’s attacker?”
No. It was the last thing on my mind. But I guessed the sooner I was done with this, the sooner I could have Harlem and expand my territory.
“Don’t worry. You’ll have his skull on your desk before the bastard’s born.”
